On April 17, 1993, astronaut Ellen Ochoa, and the crew of the STS-56 Discovery, returned to Earth after a nine-day mission. Ochoa made history as the first Hispanic woman in space. As Ochoa approaches her retirement as the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, she reflects on her path toward spaceflight and her decades of leadership in the aerospace field.
When STS-1 Columbia, the first spaceflight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, launched on April 12, 1981, the world was watching—including Ellen Ochoa who would go on to become the first Hispanic woman in space.
Ochoa watched the shuttle take off when she was a first-year graduate student in Stanford’s electrical engineering program. For her, the new scientific possibilities ushered in by Columbia seemed endless.
“It was a very different kind of spacecraft than had ever existed before,” she said. “I thought, ‘How great to be able to do experiments in a unique laboratory, things that you could only do in space, that you could never be able to do on Earth.”
Astronaut Ellen Ochoa uses a 70mm handheld camera to record an ocean scene during the ATLAS 2 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, 1993. Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center
It was a turning point for Ochoa, whose groundbreaking career would send her on four separate space missions and eventually to the helm of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) as its first Hispanic director.
The road to NASA’s astronaut class was not a simple one. Six months after Ochoa submitted her application was the Space Shuttle program’s 25th mission, STS 51-L Challenger. The ensuing tragedy put NASA’s selection of an astronaut class on hold.
“Of course, one had to think about—is this still something that I wanted to do?” Ochoa said. But her passion for pursuing science and spaceflight remained undeterred.
A year later, Ochoa was called for an interview. She went down to JSC—the place whose inner workings she would come to know very well—for the first time. (In fact, it was the first time Ochoa had been to any NASA center.) Later came the news; she was not selected.
“Some people have described it as, ‘I failed.’ I didn’t really view it that way,” Ochoa said. “I tried to turn it into, what is it that I could I do that would make me a better candidate?”
Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Director of the Johnson Space Center, 2017. Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center
Ochoa took a different job at NASA and earned her private pilot’s license. Then, she applied again with some new skills on her resume. This time, she got in.
Several years of training later, Ochoa was aboard STS-56 Discovery, studying the Earth’s ozone layer. Getting a chance to conduct experiments in space, against a background of the Earth 200 miles down below, was “more than I could have ever expected” Ochoa said.
“It was not just about experiencing space,” she said. “We were up there for a purpose. We had people counting on us. We had a job to do and we needed to work together to do it.”
Since that first flight, collaboration has been a key to Ochoa’s career success, whether leading up NASA’s CAPCOM branch or being on the ground floor for the development of the International Space Station (ISS).
As she prepares for retirement from her role at JSC, she looks ahead to the next great discoveries ahead, including new experiments aboard the ISS and NASA’s Orion spacecraft, designed to bring humans farther into space than ever before. It’s an exciting moment for space exploration that harkens back to Ochoa’s trip to JSC decades ago, and all the possibilities that lay ahead.
“It’s a moment you never forget—it absolutely changes your life forever.”